Chic in Shela

FROM PHILIP HIMBERG:

Last night, Sundance hosted a kind of thank you and farewell dinner for our Creative Advisors. Just after sunset, Christopher, Roberta, Deborah and I boarded the boat along with George Seremba and Liesl Tommy, for the Peponi Hotel. Also with us were Suhaila Cross and her daughter, Jasmine. Suhaila was truly the reason we were on this Island to begin with. She worked with KWANI TRUST, a Kenyan publishing house and had told us about Lamu a few years back. The Peponi Hotel is one of the more famous landmarks on Shela Beach, a rather upscale restaurant and Inn, frequented by European Tourists and others. At the Hotel Bar, we arranged to meet with Kevin Mwachiro, a reporter for the BBC in Nairobi who made a trip here to meet our participants and learn more about Sundance.

Dinner was outdoors near the pool under a FULL MOON! Quite the scene. And after the more humble (though delicious) food we had been served at Diamond Beach, this was our upscale splurge. The conversation was lively as we learned more from Kevin about the theatre scene and journalism in Kenya, and caught up on many of our thoughts as we near the end of this adventure. A light rain sent us scurrying inside for desserts and Kahawa (Coffee), and nothing quite topped the full moon ride back to Manda over rolling sea waters, filled with speechlessness for a part of the world so rarely visited by Americans.

Today was our formal “feedback day” for all the projects. We structured it quite differently from our usual conversations because these African artists very much want the entire community of lab participants to be present. So, we divided feedback into two sessions, In the morning, everyone gathered as one group, and Roberta lead a session in encouraging constructive comments . . .

“Adult education is a wonderful thing,” asserted Woody Alan, famously in ANNIE HALL. And so it is. My own education over the last two days, (not to mention the last almost three weeks) astounds me. The level of discourse in our room not only about people’s responses to the work (“What did you find compelling, surprising, satisfying?” “Where did you lose interest or drop out?”), but to the bigger conversations that were bursting to happen. What is theatre in East Africa? What defines an East African play? Who is our audience? Do we lead our audience? What is our language – both literally and physically? Often, I just observed as the volleyball of ideas went back and forth and in and among our five different nationalities represented (not counting American). There was no doubt that this opportunity to debate and to vent even, was a rare one. Sundance, in part, had made this possible, and we had to literally ask to defer some of the conversation to Wednesday when we have more time to de-brief.

In the afternoon we held more intimate conversations with each team, trying to ascertain where they felt they were in their work, and at times, pushing the envelope on encouraging their future explorations and experimenting. Honestly, this part of the process can fry one’s brain – working hard to stay on course, really hearing what the artist needs and where they feel they are at in their movement forward. Everyone of course is at a very different place, and ‘next steps’ are of much concern. “What will Sundance able to provide, if we are able to provide anything?” is a question that rings in our ears. We’ve opened up these folks to a way of working and paid close attention to their creative impulses. What now?